http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/newcrest-m...

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/newcrest-mining-tunes-into-tungsten/story-e6frg9ex-1226005339417

i dont hold stock in this company but i do in indochine, i have had a quick look and soon as i saw a familiar board member name that was a director of yrr at one point i lost interest straight away.


Exploration areas CAMBODIA and Colombia are not on Pure Speculation's list of destinations for our twilight years, but they are emerging as alluring exploration areas, a history of mass murder and drug cartels (respectively) notwithstanding.


OZ Minerals (OZL) is in Cambodia and is clearly looking for something big. Southern Gold (SAU) has been drilling with assay results due soon. Two newcomers may bear watching.

Indochine Mining (IDC) listed in December and is planning its first Cambodian drilling in the June quarter. The company is headed by Stephen Promnitz, who was most recently in the No 2 spot at Thai miner Kingsgate Consolidated (KCN). IDC's largest shareholder is New York hedge fund Och-Ziff, which has $US28.4 billion under management. Promnitz sees IDC as a first-mover in Cambodia, just as Kingsgate was in Thailand and Pan Aust (PNA) and the former Oxiana were in Laos. Indochine plans to spend $5m on Cambodia exploration this year and may soon be announcing more acquisitions in the region.


Another new player on this exploration frontier is Brighton Mining Group (BTN), which listed a month before Indochine. It has now reported what it describes as exciting soil samples for gold.


Meanwhile, it was with some surprise that we learned that Colombia was once the world's leading supplier of platinum. It was overtaken by Russia from the 1880s, and then by the discoveries in South Africa's Bushveld in the 1930s. Colombia came back into its own in World War I once platinum exports were curtailed from Russia after the 1917 revolution. Which is all by way of a long-winded explanation as to why Platina Resources (PGM) has applied for 1000sq km of tenements in the South American country. No hard rock exploration, nor modern techniques, have been used on Colombian platinum. PGM wants to make it clear, though, that its main focus is still on the Greenland palladium-gold project (which has some impressive resource numbers).

Transit Holdings (TRH) is, meanwhile, working to get a slice of the Colombian coal action. AngloGold Ashanti (AGG) is also spending big on gold exploration there. Colombia has been a big gold producer since Spanish Empire days right through to the late 1900s, and now its gold revival seems well under way.